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The beauty of screenplays is that they're typically sparse and the lack of words make for a much easier experience when it comes to editing. It's hard to enjoy a story when there are this number of spelling and grammatical issues and completely overwritten lines slowing the read down. In all fairness to you, on a rewrite (if you choose to go that route), you could probably drop this down to 6 pages and lose zero content.
On the other hand, had it been perfect to look at, I just wasn't feeling this misunderstanding story. The comedy might work for some people, but it's not my type.
Reads like a script from a newish screenwriter. Tons of passive writing.
As for the challenge: I had to go back and find the red element. So, even though you mentioned it several times, it didn't stand out as a story element to me. But, mostly, you lost me on the rom part of the romcom.
Not much romantic about a guy trying to recover from soiling his drawers.
The good: the early dialogue was pretty good. It didn't hold up, but it's a starting point.
Keep writing!
PaulKWrites.com
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What would a sitcom do with this? Because the incident you describe is situational comedy, but you didn't really hit the mark with it.
The problem with this is the whole thing is exposition. It's something that already happened, and we aren't even going through the process of recovering from it. The whole story here is two people describing the same incident from two different perspectives to other people and then meeting up at the end to get over it. That's not a story.
Some of the dialogue is pretty good, stereotypes aside. Way too much description going on, you can cut a lot of that down.
Email address on title page no a good thing for an anonymous challenge. Just a note for future ones.
At the opening, I am assuming this is a relatively new writer. This
Quoted Text
It is Saturday afternoon and the mall is busy. There are a lot of shoppers walking about. Two young men are leaving a shoe store. ERIC, 30’s is tall and lean. He is a sports therapist. STEVE, 30’s is shorter than Eric and a little heavier.
Has problems.
"Saturday Afternoon" is not filmable. i.e., there is no way to film a Saturday vs a Monday. You can either delete it or - if it is really important use a SUPER.
SHOPPERS should be capped.
Writing actively would really make your action blocks pop more and be more efficient. e.g., this:
Quoted Text
It is Saturday afternoon and the mall is busy. There are a lot of shoppers walking about.
Could simply be:
Busy. SHOPPERS mill about.
Anyway - going to stop commenting on these types of issues and get to the story and dialogue - but you may want to read some scripts to get some pointers.
Dialogue is a bit wooden - stilted. It doesn't sound how people talk.
I liked that you tackled a two person version of the same story - that is a nice angle to take.
Good at the start. Well, I enjoyed this line specifically -
you’re starting to look flavorful.
- despite the long-winded passive stuff, but then it deteriorated into juvenile. Perhaps you need to be in your twenties to appreciate material like this. Or maybe it was never my thing...
I like that she was a wise-up to him at the end but there was really no inkling throughout that she was.
Thanks for submitting. I hope you're contributing by reading and reviewing. This is a great place to learn.
Straight away I have issues "It is Saturday night" - need a visual way to show this, or lose it. "He is a sports therapist" - same thing
lots of "there are" - simply no need for them.
Writing like this makes the read hard, detracts from the story.
Dialogue needs some work to make it seem more human.
Ahhh! an 8 line block - I'm skimming past that, hope it doesn't contain anything important. (Now imagine a professional script reader, who has masses more screenplays to get through than we do in this challenge, he opens this up and comes across that big block of text, he's going to skim past it as well, just saying)
"Julie cut her off again" - past tense - and not needed, instead add "--" at the end of one dialogue and "-" at the start of the next, that tells us she is interrupting her.
I'm sorry but the story was boring, dialogue was flat and not natural.
It's not a Rom-Com (At least I hope a man shitting his pants is not a Rom-Com). The humour wasn't for me.
This strikes me as a newbies entry - Don't take anything to heart, if people don't like it it's nothing personal. Instead, use these reviews to improve your writing.
So I suspect we might have a bit of a greenhorn here. Keep the descriptions active and try to say as much as possible in as few lines as doable. Make every line of dialogue count and keep everything moving forward, also show us through the action, don’t tell us.
You’ve created a story here which kinda works, I reckon you got the brown pants idea and then just built around it rather than seeing where else it could lead us. Keep up the writing, just strip it back and work on your technique, as you had some form of story but as above a lot of people are fixated on the actual writing ability (as am I).
Indeed. Pun intended. Nope. Didn't care for it. I read it, finished it. The dialogue is basically one big exposition dump. Sorry, don't have anything more than that, not going to spend anymore time on this one.
I suspect you're a first-timer. Lots of first-timer issues on display (passive voice, unfilmables, overwriting, etc). Let's take the first paragraph for instance:
Quoted Text
It is Saturday afternoon and the mall is busy. There are a lot of shoppers walking about. Two young men are leaving a shoe store. ERIC, 30’s is tall and lean. He is a sports therapist. STEVE, 30’s is shorter than Eric and a little heavier.
- You've provided no ways to tell visually that it's Saturday or that Steve is a sports therapist, nor is there any mention of either in the dialogue. Not only that, neither are even important to the story as they don't come up again. Both can be scrapped.
- "...the mall is busy. There are a lot of shoppers walking about." - Redundant. "Busy" would imply a lot of shoppers walking around.
- "Two young men are leaving a shoe store." - All passive voice thus far. Makes for longer, weaker passages. That's not always the case, but it is the case here.
So much of this information already can be collapsed into one simpler, punchier line. Let's try this for the sake of argument:
"ERIC and STEVE (both 30s) step out of a shoe store into a busy mall."
I don't want to get hung up on format here, so I'll stop with this paragraph. In any case, lots of similar issues throughout that would benefit from a little thought along these lines.
Dialogue comes off pretty uninspired. A lot of emphasis on exposition, as others have mentioned, and unnatural. But also just plain bland.
The whole bickering about whether to eat healthy or not, for instance, is kind of a played-out scenario but could work with some flair. Instead of "You're starting to add a couple of pounds," how about a clever insult? How about instead of "health food" (who would call it this?), Eric pitch an actual kind of food he would have some hope of converting Steve to? Speaking of which, what kind of fast-casual restaurant hoping to make any kind of profit call themselves "Fitlicious?" It all comes off as sorta placeholder dialogue for until you can come up with something better.
This is another issue that continues throughout. I'd think about how to spice up some of this banter. Not to mention, where are the jokes? This is supposed to be a rom-com, after all.
The whole scenario of Steve shitting himself isn't particularly amusing. I mean, I guess it could be depending on your taste, but it's not great for the rom-com context since the couple in question are barely seen together. I'm not even sure the whole thing holds up; Julie reveals herself to have known about the incident the whole time, in which case I feel like she would've just called out her dude for not returning her calls and ended the whole thing. Probably would've told her friend too.
So yeah. Clunky writing on the technical front. Not particularly funny, definitely not romantic, and generally not all that interesting. Not for me.
I'm not going to repeat what the others said, but pay them attention - lots of good advices from Dave, Cam, Warren, James, etc.
The story was a little boring and the dialogue stilted but I liked that you told us two versions of the same story from different perspectives. That was clever.
They are already in the store shopping for shoes and for that reason he would never say his first lines. Because they are already there.
The problem I have - it's a rom com and you have a lot of talk but very little of it is about Julie - and by the way, they don't need to talk about anything but rather do stuff, be proactive etc. Also, there should be more of Steve and Julie together. In the middle there you have Steve and his friend talk nonsense (in my respectful opinion) to each other. You reveal little about the characters I would say.
And it's talky for me. Some people can do talky. I never could. Yours here is better than mine though.
Okay, so this script has the look and feel of a new-ish writer. If so, welcome to the site and good job on entering. Now, you should realize your story ends without really much happening, has too many cuss words for a rom com, and one or two of your action blocks are way too big and clunky. Not to worry, that can all be fixed in time. So, overall, your story really wasn't that great, but I see potential with the writing and with the comedy aspect. Keep working. But I will say this -- this is the first script I've read so far in the challenge that made me laugh out loud! When Steve said he crapped his pants I just lost it! Good job, and good storytelling. I'd already known there was an issue brewing about why he left the massage, now I'm looking forward to him revealing it. And, to me, it did not disappoint. So good work there. Just the rest of the story felt kind of flat. But like I said, good potential!
Yeah, this was all over the place. So he craps his pants and then refuses to return her calls? Two weeks later, he then makes up a story about having an upset stomach. He could have used that story the next day. Didn't make any sense.
Most of the dialogue here, especially between Julie and Kristin, is either expository or on the nose. Same between the two guys. And those action lines really need some trimming down. That first action sequence when we meet Julie could be reduced to three lines at most, for example. Just say her desk is uber clean and orderly. Everything in its place. Except for the wastebasket. The rest is just filler.
The concept was pretty decent, but the follow through just didn't quite land.
Best of luck, Gary
Some of my scripts:
Bounty (TV Pilot) -- Top 1% of discoverable screenplays on Coverfly I'll Be Seeing You (short) - OWC winner The Gambler (short) - OWC winner Skip (short) - filmed Country Road 12 (short) - filmed The Family Man (short) - filmed The Journeyers (feature) - optioned
Welcome to the site. Thanks for entering the contest.
Let’s get the obvious problems out of the way.
The dialogue was what we call “on the nose” - When a character says what he or she is thinking. Your characters have to speak more naturally without sounding like robots.
Your action or description is too detailed. Telling us every single object on the desk isn’t necessary and takes the reader out of the story. Description should be no longer than four lines. Break it up into smaller blocks if you have to.
Always proof read before submitting. A no-brainer but very important.
The story isn’t bad. There’s some good laughs amongst all the mundane stuff.
It plays more like a straight comedy. You have the romantic interests paired off with best buds rather than with each other. So that really takes away from the romance.
As mentioned above, why did it take two weeks to come up with a lame excuse?
I think with a little more practice and reading more scripts, things will improve greatly. There’s definitely something there. Thanks again for entering.
I didn't care for this one too much. Not romantic or funny, and ten pages of nothing really. A lot of grammatical errors throughout. You use than rather than then quite a lot.
The tone was off for me, the shitting himself bit just, well potentially in a full on comedy... but it's not really romcom territory in my eyes.
There's some overwriting in places but an edit would probably fix this... but if you are going to do that then I'd drop the rom bit entirely and go for gross out,